Altogether, the company will still offer six main editions of Windows 7, not including the special 'N' versions that lack Windows Media Player, a move mandated for customers in the (EU). That is the same number of versions as in Windows Vista and XP, which both A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that the company will continue to offer 'N' SKUs of Windows 7 for the EU, but declined to say how many would be offered.

But the Home Basic SKU that is at the heart of the ongoing will be exiled to emerging markets.

With Windows 7, the lowest-end version consumers in the developed world will see will be the Windows 7 Starter Edition, which Ybarra said will become available worldwide for pre-installation on new PCs "limited to specific types of hardware." That hardware would include netbooks, according to a , Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows Consumer Product Marketing.

In addition, there will also be Enterprise and Ultimate versions, which both existed in Windows Vista. Enterprise includes all of Professional's features and then some, and will only be available to large corporate customers.

Windows blogger applauded Microsoft's strategy, saying it is less about trying to achieve a Mac OS X-like minimalism -- Apple's OS comes in a single version -- than to create a logical lineup. In Vista, some supposedly higher-end versions of the OS lacked features that lower-end versions possessed, and vice-versa.